


Where’s the fire

by crayyyonn



Category: GOT7
Genre: M/M, Meet-Cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 04:11:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13310145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crayyyonn/pseuds/crayyyonn
Summary: 4 times Jaebum meets firefighter Yugyeom by accident +1 time it was by design. Jaebum kinda wishes that the +1 time never happened, period.(Except he doesn't, not really.)





	Where’s the fire

**Author's Note:**

> this is a dumb thing i literally wrote on a whim because the breakup fics i've been working on were getting too angsty for me so here have a dumb thing that's probably severely OOC idk

1

Jaebum will swear to any deity, of anyone’s choosing, that the first time was an accident.

It’s not his fault that he’d been knee deep in paper grading the night before, so deep that his hand was cramping from scrawling notes in the margins, which Jinyoung helpfully pointed out resembled chicken scratch more than anything that would help his students down the road. Jaebum resents that. He’ll have Jinyoung know that he scored full marks for penmanship back in… well, it was preschool, but still. It counts.

It’s also not his fault that they apparently make coffee with less caffeine than they used to, because even after four and a half cups (because Jinyoung is too cheap, not to mention lazy, to buy his own and stole the last half of his fresh pot earlier) of the heart palpitation inducing drink, Jaebum is still not clear minded enough to remember that metal and microwaves don’t mix.

Okay, it’s a little bit his fault.

“No harm done, I’ll just let you off with a warning this time,” the firefighter on duty is saying, and Jaebum fixes his gaze on the twinkling eyes to avoid the angry mutters of the half dressed crowd evacuated from his building by the shrill alarm. There’s a trace of sympathy in them, he thinks, amidst the amusement. Jaebum clings onto the former. “Just remember, no metal in the microwave, not even aluminum foil.”

Jaebum nods, feeling the blush burn a path down his neck, and pushes his glasses higher up his nose for want of something to do with his hands. The firefighter winks and the blush burns fiercer while Jaebum’s heart flutters in his chest. Must be the all that caffeine he had. 

He returns the firefighter’s wave as he turns and hops lithely onto the waiting truck, feeling hot all over. He blames the sparking and smoking from his microwave earlier.

“Did you even ask his name,” Jinyoung is sniggering next to him, and it makes Jaebum narrow his eyes. Because of course he didn’t. He wants to kick himself, although he loftily tells Jinyoung, “Who said I’m interested?”

He turns to make his way to the stairwell, intent on giving Jinyoung the cold shoulder for the rest of the night when the helpful shout comes.  

“It’s Kim Yugyeom!”

He stiffens, then disappears into the building, taking the stairs two at a time before the sniggering turns into full on laughter.

Still, _Kim Yugyeom_.

 

2

The fault of the second time lies decidedly with the universe.

See, Jaebum would never have intentionally broken the elevator just on the off chance that he would meet Kim Yugyeom again, not when he was alone in it, and definitely not when he’s kind of a little afraid of enclosed spaces. Clearly his thought processes are a little tied up by willing his breathing from quickening into panicked gasps, for them to land anywhere close to a certain tall, cute firefighter, so it’s understandable that it takes a while for the familiar voice to sink in and catch hold.

But then it does, and he looks up from where he’s got his face buried in his knees, and pinches himself to make sure it’s not just an Andersonesque vision.

Not that it could have been, because he’s been a little averse to matches or any kind of flame since that fateful night with the microwave, but it’s the principle of the thing.

“Hey, you okay?”

The bright, twinkling eyes he remembers from a week ago are clouded with concern now, and Jaebum hears a muffled sob before realizing it’s coming from him, and shuts his eyes in embarrassment. He’s a quarter of a century old and he’s crying in the elevator because he’d been stuck in it for what seems like forever and if this doesn’t take the cake, he’s not quite sure what will.

And fine, he might be more than a little afraid of enclosed spaces.

“Hey,” he hears, and it must be the shame that’s making it sound like it’s coming from underwater, miles away. He ignores it, hoping it’ll go away and let him die in peace, but his thought waves apparently don’t reach Kim Yugyeom because he hears the voice again, much closer now.

“Hey, I’m gonna touch you, okay? I’m gonna get you out of here.”

The preannounced touch doesn’t come through, and belatedly, Jaebum realizes he’s waiting for an indication that he can. He nods, the movement jerky, and then there’s a hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently, sliding down his arm and under it.

In just an instant, he’s bracketed by strong arms that cradle his middle and prop him up on legs that feel like rubber. He sways a little where he stands, the movement stopped by something hard and lean and warm, and he feels more than hears the firefighter’s, “Steady, I’ve got you,” as it rumbles through his chest into Jaebum’s ears.

He takes a deep breath, holds onto the smell of sweat and unnamed cologne, lets the safety it projects curl into his lungs and permeate his whole body. It conjures up an image of the firefighter. His hero. He opens his eyes.

Then he closes them in a hurry, because said firefighter is close, the way he’s bending down to look at him. Much too close. His heart rabbits in his chest. There’s no way the firefighter doesn’t feel it.

Not that he gives any indication of it, because all he does is ask, “Hey, what’s your name?” His voice is soothing, and Jaebum automatically replies. “Alright, Jaebum-sshi, I’m Yugyeom. I’m gonna get you out of here, okay? But you’ve gotta open your eyes for me. Yeah?”

Jaebum nods, opening his eyes slowly. Fortunately, the beautiful face is far away from his this time, and he’s not the least bit disappointed by that, Park Jinyoung, he tells the voice in his head scathingly. Taking a deep breath, he shifts his weight so he’s standing on his own. He catches the ghost of an approving smile when he chances a glance at Yugyeom. It bolsters him.

“Alright. My colleague outside, Mark, he’s gonna lift you out, okay? I’ll make a bracket with my hands, like this,” he demonstrates quickly, “And all you’ve gotta do is step on it and grab his hands.”

Jaebum nods. It’s simple enough. “I’ve got it,” he says gruffly, intending to make up for his lame showing earlier. Yugyeom just grins and kneels, stacking his palms together.

The rescue operation is smooth, and Jaebum takes a second to appreciate the good use of his tax dollars when he’s back on solid ground, three levels from the ground floor. Then Yugyeom is heaving himself out of the elevator car, grunting a little at the exertion of what’s amounting to a full push up and then some. Jaebum is not so out of it to miss it, and not above memorizing and cataloging the sound.

“Right then,” Yugyeom says after he’s forcibly pulled the metal doors shut (with another grunt, to Jaebum’s secret delight). “I hope we meet under better circumstances next time, Jaebum-sshi.”

Mark, whom Jaebum recognizes from the night of the microwave incident, snickers. The sound reminds him of Jinyoung and Jaebum glares at him uncharitably, making a note to never let him and his colleague slash roommate ( _slash best and_ only _friend, because you have none, Im Jaebum_ , the cursed voice pipes up in his head) within a hundred yards of each other.

Not a chance.

 

3

The third time, well.

“I’m not sure this is _better_ ,” Yugyeom says, tone doubtful. “How did this happen? Jaebum-sshi?”

Jaebum jerks his eyes away from the long, graceful line and gentle curve of Adam’s apple that became imminently visible when Yugyeom cranes his neck to look up the tree. “Huh?”

Yugyeom looks like he’s fighting a knowing grin when Jaebum meets his gaze. “I was wondering how the cat got up the tree.”

How the—“The same way any cat does, I suppose,” Jaebum offers, just a little snippily. How is he supposed to know how the damned cat got up the tree? All he knows is it got its stupid furry ass into trouble and wouldn’t stop meowing, causing Kunta and Nora to join the chorus all night, causing Jaebum to lose sleep. Jaebum hates losing sleep.

“Guess you’re right,” comes the answer. “I’ll set up the ladder then. Could you help me?”

“I’d been meaning to ask, you came alone?”

Yugyeom shrugs. “My captain took the call and decided it’s a one-man job. Not that he told me what it was when he assigned it to me,” he says, just a tad darkly. “I should’ve known.”

Jaebum wonders if Yugyeom would have been a little less bitter, a little cheerier if he’d known beforehand it was Jaebum who called it in—he’d had to give his name during the call—but figures he’s giving himself too much credit—with all the trouble he’s gotten into lately, he’s probably on the fire station blacklist.

They go about setting up the ladder, pulling it out to an appropriate height and setting it against the trunk of the tree. Then all Jaebum has to do is hold on to the bottom while Yugyeom scales it deftly until he’s within arm’s reach of the branch where the cat is perched.

“Come on kitty,” he croons. “We’re here to save you.”

The cat’s tail twitches, but it doesn’t move.

“It’s alright,” Yugyeom continues in that low, singsong voice. “You want to be on the ground, don’t you kitty? Nice, solid ground.”

Its tail twitches again, and then Jaebum sees it rise from the seated position it had been in for the past few hours.

“That’s it, slow and easy. Come on kitty,” Yugyeom all but purrs at the cat, and Jaebum feels the sound lodge somewhere in his belly, sending a flash of heat through his body. God damn attractive firemen with sexy voices. Then Yugyeom continues, “Come on, be good for me baby,” and he has to take a bracing breath, mentally sending a giant fuck you to the universe.

Clearly the cat is of the same mind, because it stands, and in a flash of blurred white fur, leaps down the trunk on the other side until it’s back on the ground. It rounds the tree daintily, coming to a stop at Jaebum’s feet, and proceeds to rub itself against his jeans.

What the fuck.

“What the fuck,” Yugyeom says.

Jaebum looks up at him, shrugs, then bends to pick up the cat when it starts trying to clamber up his leg. He strokes it as Yugyeom deftly scales back down the ladder and plants his hands on his hips. 

“What the actual _fuck_.”

 

4

The fourth time is when Jaebum finally decides they have got to stop meeting like this.

Apparently Yugyeom agrees, because the first thing he does when Jaebum slides open his homeroom door is to say exactly that. Not that Jaebum processes it at all, the way it’s followed by a slow smile that makes the firefighter’s eyes crinkle at the corner, showing a row of neat white teeth and lord help him but Jaebum has never seen a more attractive man in his _life_.

Clearing his throat in an attempt to wrest back a semblance of control, he turns to his class. “Class, can I have your attention please,” he says into the chaos that inevitably follows recess, slightly gratified when his students quiet down immediately. He hopes Yugyeom is impressed. He ought to be, if he knows anything about teenagers.

“This is Kim Yugyeom-sshi with the city’s fire department, here to talk to you about fire safety and run through the drills with you. I’ll expect you to pay attention.”

He places emphasis on the last two words, because he knows what fourteen year olds are like, but he’s pretty sure the point goes through when he waves a stack of papers at them, from the groans he gets. “I’ll be quizzing you on what was discussed.”

“Yes, Im _sonsaengnim_ ,” comes the chorus of replies, angelic as can be, and Jaebum thanks every deity he can remember for apparently smiling favorably upon him today. It’s the small miracles that count.

“Yugyeom-sshi, we’re all yours.”

He realizes his mistake when Yugyeom’s smile turns into a smirk at his words, eyes darkening. He licks his lips nervously, then again when it makes Yugyeom’s gaze dip downwards. If he’d been in his right mind, if it had been anyone else but Kim Yugyeom, firefighter extraordinaire with the twinkling eyes and floppy hair and cute butt, Jaebum would have smirked back. But it’s Kim Yugyeom, and all Jaebum can do is swallow and dart his eyes away, sternly telling his palpitating heart to _chill_.

He’s only had one coffee today, for fuck’s sake.

“Glad to hear that, Im _sonsaengnim_ ,” Yugyeom says, voice deep, and Jaebum resents him so much because he’s never going to be able to hear the salutation without getting a little bit hard in his pants again.

He clears his throat and gestures towards the raised dais in the middle of the room, before escaping to his desk in the corner of the classroom, where he spends the next half an hour of Yugyeom’s presentation staunchly looking everywhere but at Yugyeom. If either the firefighter or Jaebum’s students catch on to how oddly he’s behaving, they thankfully don’t say anything, although the class monitor gives him a weird look when he leads the class in thanking Yugyeom when he’s done.

Jaebum ignores her. He’s… catching something. Like a cold, probably. Yes, that’s exactly why his voice is sounding a little strangled.

Cold or otherwise, Yugyeom does not let him catch a break, because after his class files out to head for their music lesson, the firefighter steps towards Jaebum predatorily, backing him up against the side of his desk, arms on either side of him so he can’t duck away.

“So, _sonsaengnim_ ,” he purrs, and Jaebum’s mind flashes to the white, odd-eyed cat he’d brought home after the ordeal last week. It’s the exact tone Yugyeom had used to coax it down the tree. Jaebum would be a little offended at being treated like a skittish stray if he isn’t feeling rather like one. “It’s really good to see you.”

“Err, you too.”

Despite the period he tacks onto the end, it comes out sounding more like a question, unsure and hesitant. He grimaces internally when it makes Yugyeom’s grin grow wider, turning almost sharkish.

“I’m surprised by you,” he says conversationally. “You know, you can be quite authoritative when you want to be. I’d never imagined.”

Jaebum narrows his eyes. Just because their past few meetings had Jaebum either dazed from caffeine deprivation or frozen with phobia didn’t mean that’s who he is. He’ll have Yugyeom know he’s not just a teacher with a soft spot for cats, he also moonlights as a songwriter and break dances with a crew. Not, he scathingly adds in his head, that Yugyeom will know anything about that, seeing as he’s all brawn and no—

“Hey,” his mental tirade is interrupted. “I’ve got plenty of brains, thank you very much. But break dancing, huh? Cool. I used to compete in house, myself.”

Jaebum immediately feel his face heat up. He hadn’t intended to say it all out loud!

“You did. That last bit too, about not intending to say it out loud.”

Yugyeom smirks, leaning forward. “What does it say about you, that you lose control of yourself when you’re around me?” Jaebum just stares at him, eyes wide. The stare shifts down to pink lips when they purse in a mockery of deep thought. “Maybe that you’re comfortable showing your true self to me?”

Unfortunately (except the deities really do pull through this time, Jaebum thinks), Jaebum doesn’t get to give him his answer ( _“Presumptuous and preposterous!”_ ) because there’s the grating sound of heavy wood on wheels direly in need of greasing, and Yugyeom has sprung a good two feet away when Jinyoung pokes his head through the door.

“Wanna get food?” he asks, eyebrows raised at the tableau that is not the least bit suspicious, no, Jaebum pretending to flip through the quizzes he gave out earlier and Yugyeom staring at the far wall like Jaebum’s students’ art interest him.

They should, there are a few pieces of stellar work, if anyone cares to ask, but Jaebum’s positive opinion on his students’ talent isn’t the priority right now, because Jinyoung’s eyebrows have all but disappeared into his hairline while his lips flatten into a smirk, so he answers, “Yes please,” just a tad desperately.

He’s thankful for the interruption, really he is, although when he sees the second head that pokes through the door, he rather wants to take it back.

“Jinyoung asked us along too, Gyeom.”

And he really wants to protest, really he does, except he sees the weighted glance that Mark gives Jinyoung, and the shy, almost sweet look he gets in return, so different from the bitchiness and sarcasm Jaebum is used to, and _oh_.

Well, Jaebum is nothing if not a good friend.

 

+1

Only under extreme duress and torture (think waterboarding and the likes) would Jaebum ever confess to giving Jinyoung’s “helpful”—yes, he air quotes it—suggestions any inkling of consideration.

In the end though, he gives all the half-baked ideas up. Not because he doesn’t think _just light a cigarette under the fire alarm_ or _pretend to drown in the Han river_ or _how about I text Mark and tell him to tell Yugyeom that you desperately want to get into his pants_ has any chance in hell of working, but because Yugyeom ends up turning up at the school a week later, long after the last bell had rung and the last student had left, standing at the deserted school entrance looking for all the world like a lovesick boy from another school determined to wait for their dream girl to step through the gates so he can confess.

The lovesick part had been all Jinyoung’s projection. Jaebum just thinks he looks ~~beautiful, wondrous, a sight for sore eyes~~  impatient and bored as he scrolls through his phone.

And if Jaebum had any say in the cliched anime that is apparently his life, he would have waited a few more hours to leave, or hell, left by the back gate. But as it is, he’s striding out of school, looking forward to finally getting home and putting his feet up on the coffee table while watching SVU reruns, and it’s only Jinyoung’s sharp poke in his ribs and laughing, “Your firefighter, two o’clock,” that brings him back to the present, and it’s much too late then because Yugyeom has spotted him and is striding over.

Without his uniform, he looks younger, though not any smaller, Jaebum curses when Yugyeom stops right in front of him and Jaebum realizes he’s half a head taller. Figures. But his hair’s still floppy and his eyes are still twinkly and there’s a sheepish look on his face that makes Jaebum cast about for why it looks out of place, before realizing that it’s the tinge of self-consciousness in it, far removed from the confidence and swagger he usually holds himself with.

Yugyeom is nervous, he realizes. But about what?

“Jaebum-sshi,” the firefighter starts, and there’s just enough laden promise in his voice for Jaebum to hold his breath.

Next to him, Jinyoung excuses himself, and then it’s just Jaebum staring up at Yugyeom, who’s biting his lip and growing uncharacteristically redder by the second.

“Yes, Yugyeom-sshi?”

Yugyeom clears his throat. “Jaebum-sshi,” he says again, and Jaebum waits with all the patience his fourteen year olds have helped him cultivate, all the patience Nora and his two former strays have instilled in him. But what Yugyeom says next makes him so tempted to just give all his anger management therapy sessions back to his high school counselor.

“I have it on good authority that you’re the only one who can put out the fire in my pants.”

Jaebum just blinks, letting the line fester in all its cringe-inducing glory. Seriously, there’s nothing he wants more than to smack him on the head right now. If only to wipe the self-satisfied smirk off his face. He must have misread the nervousness, in hindsight. It was stupidity. And cheesiness, to go with the nineties floppy hair and wholesome good looks designed to fool everyone. But mostly stupidity.

“For the record, we’re in a _school_ ,” he hisses. “And you’re the firefighter, not me.”

“Oh, alright. Guess Mark hyung was right about the action not words thing.”

What, Jaebum wants to ask, but just as he opens his mouth, Yugyeom’s lands on him, and he catches that familiar scent of sweat and cologne again except this time a hundred times more potent. He can’t help but rock forward on his heels a little to chase it, but the the mouth goes just as quickly as it came leaving Jaebum blinking up at Yugyeom, who is turning a dusky pink and looking anywhere but at him. Jaebum isn’t sure which he likes more, the quiet confidence or this this new shyness he’s apparently acquired overnight. Even his ears are pink. It’s cute.

But that also comes and goes, because Yugyeom’s next words make him seriously consider decking him for real.

“So what do you say, wanna stop, drop, and roll into my bed?”

Throwing his hands up, Jaebum stomps away. He takes it back. He doesn’t like Kim Yugyeom at all.

**Author's Note:**

> except he really, really does and they stop drop and roll right into jaebum's bed eventually.
> 
> -
> 
> i'm sorry i think i'm hilarious please don't hate me
> 
> \+ i did a [EOY writing meme](http://crayyyonn.tumblr.com/post/169258518212/eoy-writing-meme-2017) if any of y'all is into that kinda thing
> 
> thanks for reading <3


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